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:: INTERVIEW WITH KAREN BRENNAN ::

As interviewed by Jacklyn Attaway, March 2005.

In the title piece, "The Garden in Which I Walk," you use a new and interesting technique of telling the story by showing what's in and going on in the garden. Is the "garden" the writer's world?

I don't know if there's anything new about this technique, especially. It's basically description. It's "showing" and not "telling" as they say in fiction writing workshops. What may seem new is the formal "anaphora"-- the repetition of a word ("There") which creates a rhythm for the story. In the title story the garden represents the world itself, a place which is ambivalent--that is to say, it can be both dangerous & nourishing at the same time. Of course, in choosing the title of this story for the collection title, I was indeed thinking of the writer's world as a garden.

Do all the stories of "Three Seaside Tales" take place in Boca Raton, Florida or Florida?

Yes!

In the "Mary Ann" segment of "Three Seaside Tales," of Louise Mary Ann states, "She means well but she is not a writer. She doesn't have the curiosity to put up with things." Do you believe that this is what writers do, put up with the world in order to observe and record it?

I do, actually. I think we tolerate a lot out of curiosity. Also, our curiosity acts as a buffer to the world's pain, perhaps.

"Secret Encounters" is spilt into sections titled "WRECKAGE," "SLEEP," and "FACE." Why did you choose these particular titles?

No particularly deep reason-- obviously they are the themes of each section.

Is "Saw" about the possible redemption in the loss of vanity? Did Fran intentionally maim herself, as if hypnotized?

I don't think it was intentional-- unconscious?? Maybe. I think it's problematic to be beautiful in a world that worships beauty-- you risk being never seen for who you are. I've never had that problem, by the way.

In "Saw," are you making any subtle references to Body Integrity Identity Disorder (B.I.I.D.)? I just read an article on it.

I've never heard of BIID-- but I am interested in issues of women's identity construction, which all too often have to do with cultural ideas of beauty & so on, blah blah blah. The woman's body is a site for these ideal projections of physical beauty as well as, inevitably, the site for the disintegration of this beauty, ie, the site for flaws. The idea of flaw as castration (symbolically) & therefore that which makes the woman "less than" a man no doubt is operating somewhere in my subconscious since I've read lots of Freud & also French post-structural theory when I was working on my PhD. In fact, my dissertation was on hysteria (Hysteria & the Scene of Feminine Representation), which I understood as a version of the above, the maimed woman in "Saw," her body a site for injury (by the patriarchal culture). However, I've moved to a different phase of feminism now & so am uncomfortable even using the word patriarchy which seems inadequate to describe these terrible times in America, where the white man maintains his superiority like a tyrant.

The other thing which is important to say is that when I write stories I don't have any theoretical or intellectual agenda. I follow the line of my imagination, the sound of my sentences.

Some of your stories deal with scars/ physical defects ("Secret Encounters: FACE," "Saw," "The Emergence of Modernism," and "On Vision") and ideas about art ("The Emergence of Modernism" and "On Vision"). In the vein of scars and scarring converging with the direction of the eye, do you think that art and the body are interrelated?

This is a very interesting question, Jackie, but it's not easy to answer. The turning of the body into an object has always been part of the female malady and pleasure, I suppose. In this sense, it's art. Also, the representations of women throughout history (by mostly male writers & visual artists) have been subjects of art-- so really, it's the feminine body that I suppose I continue to explore-- & you're perceptive to ferret it out!

"Happy Girl" possesses a sense of theatrics. It begins then progresses with motion and direction like a play, then morphs into more of an inner dialogue. By using this technique, are you intending to display the contradiction, as mentioned in "The Emergence of Modernism:" "Terror occurs when one's insides don't match one's outsides. The condition of modernity [...]," between the inner and outer self?

Another interesting question which is hard to answer because, as I hope I conveyed in my earlier response to the "Saw" Question, I am not thinking "theory" when I write stories. That, for me, would be the kiss of death-- it would impart a studied quality to my work & it would prevent the happy accidents that my work thrives on. On the other hand, I have read certain things, certain things obsess me, I have had certain life experiences-- and these are bound to inform my writing. It's just that I don't intend them, per se. Happy Girl is about obsession & so it is bound to invoke all kinds of things--

The speaker in "Famished" is blatantly honest and seems to lack conscience and direction. Are these "symptoms" of her "hunger," meaning is she just pushed by her obsessions and desires?

Sure, you could say that. How is it that you think she lacks "conscience and direction??" The narrator of that story has plenty of volition, is even a kind of free spirit, but with that freedom, apparently, comes a certain yearning for what she's given up in order to attain it.

I really loved the premise of "Paradise:" telling partial stories of people the narrator meets on a plane, all encompassing the narrator's experience and why she loves planes. Is this narrator you, collecting stories, "putting up with things for curiosity's sake?" A pilot with Tourette's, YIKES! Did you ever have a pilot with Tourette's Syndrome?

Actually, no. But it's funny, isn't it? I think what happened is that I did sit next to a pilot once who did twitch one time & then I began to think it would be funny to have him be a chronic twitcher.

Interestingly enough, planes usually take people to "paradise" and most of these people are messed-up or depressed. The act of flying is "paradise" for the narrator. She states, (and I love this line): "I love [...] the fact that for x amount of time, my job is to sit here and kill time. I love being between places, and so nowhere, en route-it feels to me like dreaming." Does being suspended in space with no geographic location, almost create the sense of being suspended in space and time for the narrator and/or yourself?

Well, yes, absolutely. I like anything between borders-- life in airports, as well as writing between borders/genres. This book, for example, is not quite fiction, not quite nonfiction, not quite poetry, but a little of all that-- which is like being suspended in space/time, which is when anything might happen.

In "Princess," you section the story off with allusions to "Sleeping Beauty" (a princess awakening, sometimes to war) and television scenes depicting refugees running and huddled together. What's the association? Also, why Ben Gazzara and Suzanne Pleshette, such conservative "American" actors, playing the refugees?

Oh who knows. That's a weird story. I don't think it matters who they are so much as they are sort of has-beens but still vaguely familiar and so almost generic.

"Island Time" captures the Emma Bovary in all women. While she does entertain the possibility of taking a lover, why doesn't your speaker have an affair with Mike Dean? Is it really just the attention that Emma, your speaker, and women in general desire? You use the statement from Flaubert, "C'est moi [...] Me too." Do you think the desire for affection, a desire that so many women have, is a selfish desire?

Hell no! The desire for affection is certainly NOT selfish. I am sympathetic with Emma. But my narrator didn't have an affair because she actually loved her husband-- Mike Dean was a little unappealing, didn't you think?

I noticed that you mention and somewhat model several works of literature. You are obviously well read. What are you reading now? What is/are the book/books that made you want to be a writer?

I have a PhD in English-- & I teach literature as well as creative writing at the University of Utah. I'm always looking for new stuff to teach, so I read a lot. I'm on sabbatical this year & so I've been reading somewhat leisurely-- Russell Banks' The Darling, Carol Shield's Unless, Angela Carter's collected, lots of books of poems, including Lee Ann Brown, Van Jordan, Martha Rhodes, & oh a mystery every now & then, Lydia Davis, Ron Sukenick...

You employ metafiction for "The Woman Who Loved Petunias." This technique threw me off a bit, but I loved the ordinariness of random information all crammed into a particular time period, how it all converges to evoke a new meaning in the observer's life. Is this what you were intending?

Exactly!

"Tutti Frutti" is probably one of my favorite stories in the collection, mainly for its interesting and quirky characters and offbeat situation. Did you aim to create characters that evoke neither sympathy nor pity except in the sense that they're both pathetic people: She is controlled by her obsession with Elvis, and he lacks conscience for taking advantage of her weakness?

I don't expect either of these characters to invoke sympathy-- this story is more of a cultural rant.

Is the narrator for "On Vision" a pretentious photographer? Should we dislike and somewhat fear this narrator?

He-- I think of him as a "he"-- is kind of creepy. We should fear him-- I know I do.

In the story, "The Soul In Its Flight," what is the significance of the repetition of the listing of the objects on the speaker's bureau? Also, is their significance linked to the speaker's childhood ritual of burying objects to preserve them? Likewise, is this childhood ritual linked to death/ the body, mainly the death and body of her father?

Who knows? The (unanswered) question of these significances are central to the story & central to the reiteration of those night table objects. Of course it all has to do with death, the perishable body, inanimate objects holding their places in a perishable world & so forth.

The title of your book is The Garden in Which I Walk. I noticed that in many, if not all of your stories in this collection, narrators are observing the world and telling the reader what they see. Do you feel, as Mary Ann does, that a writer must have enough curiosity to walk the world with open eyes? Should the writer respect and appreciate what she encounters in order to deliver what she's observed back to the world?

Well of course!